Who is India?

The Indian consumer has matured beyond the one shop, one product mentality. Today, the market is split into several sub-markets and is strong enough to experiment with products and brands without reservations. Positioned to be a world super power within the coming decade, India has become a hot destination for many multi-national companies. But, how effective is their market penetration?

The Indian consumer, for the most part, cannot be bothered with iterative improvements. It is the disruptive innovations that gain their attention. It is the products that bring the high-end features at affordable prices, but not compromise on durability, that inspires loyalty.

This play between cost and durability is self-propagating and has become a driving reason as to why India has come to become a hub for innovation. The constant need to keep the costs down and the value up is what has set Asian countries apart from the rest of the world. India has a word for it. Jugaad. Better understood as disruptive innovation, Jugaad roots from the abundant population and thinly distributed resources.

Bustling with a population of over 1.2 billion people. A population that is spread over 29 states and 7 union territories, India’s people come from close to 200 ethnic groups and speak close to 1700 languages. Every weather condition you can imagine has its place in India’s 2 million square miles of land. Indeed, a land of extremes.

This diversity is seen not only in the Indian demography and consumer mentality, but also in its businesses as well.

When you consider the diversity in the Indian market, keeping the cost down and the durability up is no easy task. Though many solutions may work as copy-paste, the bulk of the population cannot be addressed with this mentality. The strategies to maximize visibility and reach need to be innovative and frugal too.

Companies such as Godrej & Boyce excel at this. The consumer engagement strategy that drives Godrej & Boyce is progression, expression, empathy, and experience. Navroze Godrej, executive director of strategy and innovation at Godrej & Boyce, said “Survival = Innovation”. During the Strategy World Tour Mumbai, we will explore what it means to constantly churn out products that are consistently mass market successes.

The way India defines innovation evolves with its market as it becomes more consumeristic and as urban centric. But, innovation in and of itself has to be focused. Its purpose raw.

To have a better context driven understanding of the term innovation in the language that is India, we need strong perspectives, we need to take a deep dive into Indian art, history, and culture. How closely is consumerism and urbanization tied to each other? What is the price we pay for urbanization? What is the hyper local definition of urban? Is urbanization just another word for compromise on culture and community?

Our first steps will be along the streets of a 400 year old village in Bandra, to get a brief glimpse of a time gone by; from a place that hasn’t yet lost its old world charm. We will meet with Ayaz Basrai, founder of Busride Design Studio, who will help us better understand the change that time brings and the choices it puts forth. To wrap up the evening and provide a platform for a conversation about the contrast in the choices at hand, we will be at St. Jude Bakery.